To Be Captain
by AuraThundera
Summary: A segment of Captain Bridger's diary. Set in the second season, Bridger gripes about the new crew members. I think the actual story is okay, but I hated writing it, and the author's note says so. Whenever I try to write in the second season, I always w


**To Be The Captain**   
Aura Thundera   
deonii@yahoo.com

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Disclaimer:   
The characters of seaQuest DSV are not my property.

Author's Note and Rant:   
This story is told in the form of a segment from Captain Bridger's personal journal, left behind on his island before the Hyperion incident.

Rubber aliens. Whatever did the SQ crew do to deserve to go straight to hell? Do networks think that torturing us poor fans with dungeons full of psychics, gene freaks, rubber aliens and bad writing is something we enjoy?

DID NBC THINK I'M A MASOCHIST?

*deep breath*

Now. SeaQuest is dead.   
I am not upset.   
I like rubber aliens.   
I like Lonnie and Dagwood and Piccolo and Wendy.

**_Who am I trying to fool?! I hate them all!_**

I want the first season back.

*end rant, begin story*   


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I sat contentedly alone at a table in the Officer's Mess. Dinner was actually passable that day-I guess because they weren't serving that awful beef substitute. I'm glad that they still let us eat real fish, though next thing they'll try outlawing that too. It had been a good day without any catastrophes-no psychics, nightmares, ghosts or aliens.

Then it all went bad.

I'd had considerable respect for Ensign Henderson. After all, she'd been raised by an engineer ar a solar station; he couldn't have been the most attentive father. She'd had the guts and ability to work her way up to being the finest. Now, don't get me wrong, she doesn't have the professionalism that Lieutenant Commander Hitchcock had-but that I don't mind. It never interfered with her duties, and that was all that really mattered.

Today, Ensign Henderson came into the mess not long after I had sat down. All the other tables were full, and she was looking for a place to sit. I offered to let her sit with me. Nobody else but Commander Ford ever sits with me anymore....I miss Kristin...

But I was talking about Ensign Henderson. She promptly asked me to call her Lonnie. I did not make her the offer to start calling me Nathan. That's Kristin's privilege. But she started in anyway. Then she made some comment about me looking uptight, like Ford.

I asked her why. I shouldn't have. Lonnie promptly told me that she could fix the problem. She reached over and unzipped the front of my jumpsuit more, giving my chest a slight caress with her fingertips through my t-shirt. If there ever was a woman who could get promoted by sleeping with her commanding officers, Henderson is definitely her.

Unfortunately for Lonnie, I'm not that kind of Captain. In fact any Captain who would sleep with her deserves to be stripped of his rank and removed from the Navy. You should earn your rank based on your skill and ability as a sailor, not for your ability to make out.

I took the coward's route out the instant I felt her hand on my leg. I finished my dinner as fast as I could and told her that there was an important matter on Seadeck that I had to attend to. I spent half an hour on Seadeck. By the end of those thirty minutes, Smith was grating on my nerves. I miss Kristin. Smith can't come up with a decent use for all of the science equipment that I had installed on this boat.

Kristin had helped me with the design. And, at the last minute, I slipped in a few things that I knew would delight her. I would have had no greater pleasure than to watch her face light up to discover that the UEO had allowed me to put in a high-tech microbiology lab. But they reassigned her, and Kristin never came aboard.

In the course of my wanderings as I left the Seadeck, I came to the door of that same lab I'd had put in for Kristin. Now, it sits dusty and unused-Smith has no interest in microbiology as Kristin did, and Smith leads the research into other directions. I opened the door and went in-no one would dare ask me why I was in an unused lab, after all, I am still the Captain!

Depression has become a nearly constant companion of mine. I miss Kristin terribly. I haven't seen her in nearly a month. She's been serving in a land based lab near Pearl, but I just don't get shoreleave all that often. I've nearly made several requests to UEO Command that Kristin be transfered back-but I can't hurt Smith like that. Wendy's made it her life's work, and she's vastly lucky to have come this far. I can't take her dreams away.

Especially because it's only that I want Kristin and Wendy makes me uncomfortable. If Wendy was incomptetent in her duties, I would have no qualm about having her removed. But she is not! Oh, it would make things so easy if she was.

I came back to my quarters later. The room is so small and dark-so unlike the larger, bright room where Kristin and I laughed and talked on the first seaQuest.

It is lonely here. For the first time, I require the prescence of another to enjoy the peace of the sea. I am lonely.

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AAUUUUUUUGH!   
*frustrated scream*   
I will never again write in the second season.


End file.
